Resourcing

Resourcing is always a challenging question for your marketing teams. Your web strategy can address a climate of reduced budgets, fewer resources and the drive to increase leads & sales.

The first question that needs to be answered is...

Do you build your own internet marketing team, or do you outsource to digital agencies?

To answer this question you need to consider some critical variables:

What is your budget and what resources do you need to get the most from it?

What is your current capability and what will be needed to keep improving results?

At what speed do you need to move?

Who’s head is on the block if results are not achieved?

There is no answer that fits all. You can only answer this question with careful thought and understanding of what you feel you don’t know.

One answer is common, do it yourself or outsource. You must commit the management time and know the principles to what needs to be done or more than likely you will not succeed.

We have seen many organisations make the mistake of outsourcing, in the process letting go of all responsibility to manage the end to end process.

You need to ensure you keep the responsibility of achieving business results. When you outsource, if all fails, you may choose not use the agency again, but the responsibility still lies with you.

Offshore outsourcing is even more difficult. Budget pressures can make an offshore solution seem very attractive to you. You can get many resources with-in a tight budget.

What we have found, along with many of our clients, is that the management requirement goes up exponentially. You still need to ensure that quality and results are achieved. You may also find that the initial cost saving can disappear through increased hours to get the job done.

What you will find if you decide to build an internal team, is that in Australia experienced internet resources are not easy to find.

The constant changing environment, and the struggle educational institutions have in keeping up with the pace of change, make it almost mandatory that you teach your own team. Once you have well trained and experienced resources, your challenge is then staff retention and motivation.

So what is the bottom line to resourcing?

To fit within budgets, consider your systems and procedures. You can leverage your current team by consistently implementing repeatable systems and procedures.

If these are strong, consider trialling a brand new person with limited knowledge from a local university. The questions and intervention you need to take will tell you what management capability will be needed to outsource offshore.

Some local internet agencies will get you great results. However, you need to develop and know your strategy and fundamentals to internet marketing and website design.

Ensure you manage all resources to actual business results, not the intermediate measures. For example revenue and qualified leads are good business measures. Visitors, Enquiries, Downloads are all intermediate measures and quite easy to achieve. They may not contribute effectively to your business results.

Consider the facts and educate yourself on the internet. Most things on the internet are easy and low cost to do. Finding out what you don’t know you don’t know is the biggest challenge you have – consistent internet education can help you bridge this gap.